Rice and Beans, Plum Torte and Other Midweek Winners
by Cindi Sutter, Founder of The Spirited Table® - article by Sam Sifton - NYT Cooking
Good morning. One of the kids made rice and beans for dinner the other night and didn't use a recipe, and it was so good we're calling it this week's no-recipe recipe.
(Are you new here? We do this every Wednesday. Welcome!)
She made rice. While it was steaming, she sautéed chopped onions and garlic in olive oil. Then she browned some ground pork on top of it and seasoned the mixture with salt, pepper and a hefty few tablespoons of hot curry powder. She added a can of black beans, then the finished rice. She stirred everything together and fed everyone who was around, and there was still some left when her parents got home from the gig that had kept them from feeding their children themselves. The hugs doled out that night were especially tight. Curry in the rice and beans: It was good.
Maybe make rice and beans this week even if you don't want to freestyle? There are loads of good recipes for the dish on Cooking. I like the Louisiana version that Kim Severson scored from the New Orleans raconteur Pableaux Johnson, for red beans and rice. I like the Cuban version Kim found down in Havana earlier this year, a dish called arroz congrí. I like Francis Lam's recipe for feijoada, which pairs nicely with Kim's recipe for can't-miss rice. And I'll always be partial to my own recipe for Sunday beans, which really you can make any night of the week. Just add rice.
Or go another direction entirely. Have you made Mark Bittman's recipe for salmon with salsa fresca yet? Y'oughta. Or Melissa Clark's recipe for a panzanella with tomatoes and herbs? It's outstanding. This could be a nice night to make Florence Fabricant's recipe for chicken paillards with corn salad. Or to smash down the crazily flavorful lamb burgers we learned how to make from the team at Lucky Peach.
Finally, we are coming up on the 33rd anniversary of one of the most popular recipes in the history of The New York Times, Marian Burros's original plum torte (above). Our Margaux Laskey has a marvelous accounting of the recipe's history in the Food sectiontoday, along with an examination of the ways in which the recipe can be adapted. And if cooking a torte and not dinner seems exciting, well, that's why takeout food was invented. Order in some supper tonight. Cooking dessert is still cooking!
Many, many other ideas for what to cook tonight may be found on Cooking. You know what to do with the recipes you find there: Save them to your recipe box. That way you can come back to them when you're ready to cook. You can rate the recipes when you're done cooking them, and leave notes on them if you have a shortcut or substitution to suggest. And of course you can share them with friends and family: send them out via email or social media to your heart's content. (If you run into trouble with any of that, please ask for help: cookingcare@nytimes.com.)
Now, perhaps you would like to go down a deep rabbit hole? Check out the sci-fi "Expanse" series by James S.A. Corey, which has lately grabbed us tight. No? Fine. Here's a review of a book about killer cats. I'll see you Friday, when I'll still be doing penance for an error I introduced into the newsletter of Sept. 9. The culinary historian I wrote about who discovered an amazing menu from the 1840s is Henry Voigt, not Voight. Let the Breeders play us off: "Cannonball"!
Red Beans and Rice - KIM SEVERSON
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Every Monday, you can find a pot of red beans and rice cooking in someone’s kitchen in New Orleans. The food writer and New Orleans bon vivant Pableaux Johnson’s house is no exception. The dish, an easy meal from when people used to reserve Monday to do the wash, was once made with the pork bone left over from Sunday supper. In this version, Mr. Johnson strongly encourages the use of hand-made Louisiana Andouille, but smoked sausage will do.
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LEARN: How to Cook Beans